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【Abstract】

Ice accretion can negatively impact human safety and a wide range of commercial applications. There is a critical, unmet need to develop materials that can facilitate the passive shedding of ice over both small and large areas. Here we have engineered a novel class of materials and coatings that can induce scale-independent, passive shedding of ice (or self-deicing), through thermally induced residual stresses. We also developed an analytical model to enable the systematic material design of self-deicing systems, which can be potentially expanded to various freezing systems by adjusting ice properties. We observed strong quantitative agreement between our experiments and the predictions from the analytical model. This allowed us to elucidate the impact of various material properties such as the modulus, thickness, and thermal expansion coefficient on the self-deicing potential for a given system. Overall, this study puts forth a new promising strategy for passive ice shedding that relies solely on temperature fluctuations that are inherent in any external environment, and can therefore be useful for a wide range of applications.